How your abstract test score is interpreted

As with the other aptitude tests (verbal and numerical reasoning), your abstract reasoning test score is compared to a benchmark (or a norm group) made up of the scores achieved by people working at an organisational level and in an occupation similar to the one you are applying for. For example, if you apply for a role in Marketing and are given an abstract reasoning test to complete, your raw score (or the number of correct responses) is then compared with the scores achieved by people who either work in Marketing roles or who applied for roles in Marketing. This allows the employer to compare your abstract reasoning skills with those of others who are either working in or would like to work in a similar field.

There is no ’passing’ score for the abstract reasoning test. Your abstract test result is calculated relative to that of other people in similar roles. This means that even if you correctly answered most of the questions in the abstract reasoning test, your result may still be lower than that of people working in similar roles.

How is this possible?

Let’s look at the following example: you correctly answered 24 of 30 questions. You interpret this to be a ‘good result’. However, other people in similar roles to that you applied for also have very strong abstract reasoning skills and on average correctly answer 26 of 30 questions. This means that your ‘good result’ is actually a ‘bad result’ because it’s lower than the average result of people working in a similar role.